The Fightlinker Guide to UFC 135

We’ve already done a decent amount of breaking down UFC 135 vis a vis our Coors Light dump bet with Five Ounces of Pain, and currently can’t find any sportsbooks that’ll allow us red blooded North Americans to gamble on human cockfighting. So this guide will concentrate on the storylines coming out of UFC 135:

Is Jon Jones the present or the future?

This here is the manufactured narrative coming into UFC 135, good for getting normies and casual fight fans into this fight. What’s that about Rampage being +400 to +700 on all the betting sites? Oh don’t pay attention to that! Jones is inexperienced, Rampage is in his prime. Suuuuure. But I don’t need this title fight to be competitive … I’m here for the ass whuppins. And either Rampage catches Jones with something (always a possibility) or Jones is gonna roll forward like a thresher and harvest Jackson with ease.

Is Matt Hughes too old for this shit?

Retirement retirement retirement. Matt Hughes has been talking about since he re-signed the last time with the UFC three fights ago. At the time he said there was no way he’d finish the contract and it was just so the UFC would have him locked up. Now he’s up to the last fight and his opponent went from Diego Sanchez (hard) to Josh Koscheck (harder). Hughes is acting like he’s taking this all in stride but it must be a frustrating situation to deal with. Beating some young buck is hard enough without having a different, more difficult buck switched in last second. And we saw what happened to Jason MacDonald last weekend because he had one foot out the door when he went into the cage against Alan Belcher. Pray for Matt Hughes! Can a country boy survive?

Can Gomi get revenge?

For most people, the moment they realized Nick Diaz was truly something special was when he boxed up Takanori Gomi at Pride 33 and gogo’d him. It was also the beginning of a slide for Gomi, who was 27-3 before he met the Stockton native. Since then he’s gone 5-4 and has been having some trouble getting the Fireball going. Tonight is a great chance for him to tell the world he’s serious about sticking around. In Nate, he’s got an opponent who’ll probably stand with him even though he shouldn’t. It’s been a while since Gomi has faced an opponent who MO isn’t gonna be all wrasslin and holding. Can Nate take the kind of bombs Gomi is known for dropping? Can Gomi show he’s still relevant?

Join us in the chat starting at 5:30PM EST for all the prelim action, followed by post-fight breakdown posts for all the PPV fights. And of course, no night would be complete without an Incredible Expanding UFC 135 post!